musings about Washington, DC, and anywhere, and anything else (politics, food, the environment...)

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Out with the old....

This dreary day is perfect for taking down the holiday decorations; the tiny tree will be chopped up tomorrow and scattered around for mulch, fertilizer, etc., and the soil and pot saved--more soil to be added, to start more container gardening nonsense...

One thing potentially made easier is throwing out the trash, as a few weeks ago the county provided new, gigantic recycling bins. These are to be used for the improved recycling process, known as single-stream recycling. Basically, this means you can recycle almost anything you're likely to throw out in the course of a week, except for food or items that have touched food (that is, items which could be composted).

(The above video from the Science Channel is of a manufacturing plant that uses a single stream recycling process.)

That's right, newspapers, paper, (rinsed out and dried) cans and bottles, torn up cardboard boxes, magazines, you name it, you can toss it into the recycling bin. Yippee! Makes life easier.I'm keeping the old bin, however, as a recycling way station, and transferring stuff from it to the colossus on recycling day.

The one thing that could mess up this scheme is the lack of communication by the county regarding the new process. One day, guys just showed up bringing the bins, which had a couple of pamphlets attached to them with instructions, etc. No letters preceeded this rollout, no appearances were scheduled by county leaders to discuss the benefits, etc.

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Finally, corporations are starting to reduce waste. Perhaps it's no coincidence that one of the few retailers this season to have something resembling a profit, Amazon, has also introduced a process to reduce customers' "wrap rage,"; they call it Frustration-Free Packaging. I wish I'd known about this when I had to purchase a Verizon cell phone earlier this year, and a Timex watch; it took some ten minutes to release the $30 watch from its package. Sheesh!

Smaller companies are joining the reduced waste bandwagon, as well. Two manufacturers of my favorite ginger candies, Ting Ting Jahe and Reed's Ginger Brew, have changed the paper that wraps the individual candies to edible rice paper wraps! This doesn't affect the taste of the candies, as far as I'm concerned. So, the only thing that has to be thrown away when done downing all the chews is the bag that they came in. Nice!